Wednesday, May 05, 2010

The idea of the island creating a sort of sanctuary while imposing seclusion is confounded even further with the quotation Donovan uses to begin this piece: “An island / Has a public quality.” The quote comes from objectivist poet, George Oppen. This quote re-envisions the notion of the island that one gets from Ben-Ner’s film or from the content of Donovan’s poetics as it suggests that an island is not a place for sanctuary or separation, but a place that is open and accessible. This could also be a red herring, as the piece is dedicated to another poet, Gregg Biglieri, who is known for a masterful use of puns.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Krist Gruijthuijsen Could you expand a bit more upon this usage of existing languages, forms and images? In other words, could you explain what the term quotation means to you?

Adam Pendleton I think it changes depending upon what you’re trying to achieve. Critically, I think the idea of quotation is a problematic track. As an idea, it opposes a necessary engagement with pertinent critical forms or discourses. I think in the realm of language, within certain linguistic vocabularies, appropriation is a very liberating idea, but quotation is a very limiting one. Within the sphere of art it’s the other way around, wherein quotation can feel more expansive as a position while appropriation is more limiting as an operating space. Any kind of definition that I do have is a functioning one. It is one that works itself out in my work. The making and the doing is its own definition. Quotation or appropriation is a way of confronting reality on its own terms. --from Quote Number One. (Or how to thrive on linguistic prospects.)

"the ear is the only orifice that doesn't close"--from Sharon Hayes' Parole

Your silence blows theEars off my head

So that what I'm hearing And what isn't seenStructures the rupture

What's left-overFrom speaking privately In a public place

Some ways to imagineNot being them Being sous ratureOr simply tongue-tied

If the tongueHad eyes and they Were here

If they Looped like history Like the history of A scream

Or steam from that Whistle not yet blowing

The voices absent in this presentIn their presence coheres a statelessness Without subject

Sentiment is the tenuousWe screaming againWords one lip-synchs for their life (RuPaul)

Discourse schools a public voidIn private just becauseYou put a mic

On me doesn't mean my voice Will carry

Or anyone is out there listening

We are archivable which meansWe can easily be forgotten

We are public which means We are double/multiple/substitutional

Through no lack of repressionDo the words finally appear

However private we are howeverRich our interior life

[politics which pressures the inside out][politics will smoke us out]

[politics will drive us into the world][politics will drive us into the open]

Where any one may listen

To this resonance pattern To these distances wherever you goVoice a form of intimacy without controlEmotions before they formed and hardenedInto a public speech

Which summons us all these voices verbsRecorded but not sufficiently heardStricken from the record it would seemBefore sound could appearThinner than the thing-in-itselfThe magnetism of all lost futures

Sunday, May 02, 2010

"Giant oil-services provider Halliburton may be a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the ‘cementing' process -- that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon."